The personal blog of Reyn Bowman, a Durham NC resident, 40-year veteran of community-destination marketing and still an explorer in community sense-of-place. Opinions expressed here are those of the author.

Friday, December 21, 2012

A Fond Farewell and a Short Break to Recharge

Closing in on my average of 287 posts a year since retiring three years ago, I’m going to take a break to recharge. I’ll begin posting again each day on December 31st.

But first I’d like to thank Gretchen Cooley who has volunteered to collaborate with me by editing and making suggestions to improve the last 700 posts or so. As anyone who reads regularly knows, my posts are more like essays and always involve links to studies and research.

All tolled, she has edited the equivalent of about 14 average-size books in the little more than two years since she volunteered to help me. I will miss teaming with her.

In the late 1980s, Gretchen was selected to represent neighborhoods on the newly-created Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) Board where she was charged with recruiting the organization’s first chief executive.

Through that process she was the first person from Durham, North Carolina, to reach out to me for a telephone interview nearly 25 years ago.

After she and another board member, Anne Gregory, talked to me they convinced their fellow board members to fly me in from the west coast for a face to face interview. The rest is history as I became the start up exec for Durham’s first official community marketing agency, the position I retired from after 21 years.

It was her down-to-earth passion for Durham and her dry wit that first gave me an intriguing sense of what has become my adopted home.

During those turbulent start-up years, Gretchen served as chair of the authority that governed the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, the body to which I was accountable for more than three terms.

On more than one occasion she gave me the benefit of the doubt during a difficult patch when contributed to my longevity. Her activism in the community also gave me credibility in circles where it may have taken years to establish.

She lives a very full life and it has been an extraordinary gesture for her to edit an average of 1,000 words each day while coming and going from her many other commitments and time with family. She epitomizes why Durham is where great things happen!

I wish her well with her next pursuit.

This is probably also a good time to give an update on the wrist I shattered a year ago November 3rd. Thanks to fourteen titanium screws and a great surgeon and loving friends and my own determination, I rapidly regained full mobility and the nerves in three of my fingers have fully reignited.

It was my first broken bone that I know of and hopefully my last.

I appreciate that so many people from around the world follow this blog even though it is a bit eclectic.